MINNEAPOLIS — Darrell Rasner has certainly been more effective and durable than Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy and a big reason the Yankees aren’t on life support in the AL East.

“He is the story, forget the other stuff,” Hank Steinbrenner said last week about Rasner when asked about Hughes and Kennedy being disappointments.

Rasner certainly has been sharper than he was yesterday against the Twins at the Metrodome where the Yankees’ three-game winning streak ended with a sleepy 5-1 loss that was witnessed by 27,479.

Four runs and eight hits in 5 1/3rd innings easily qualifies as Rasner’s worst outing in five starts. However, after a stretch of 10 games (eight wins) in which the Yankees averaged 6.8 runs their bats were chilled by four Twins pitchers.

“I thought he threw the ball good but we didn’t score enough runs,” Joe Girardi said of Rasner, who is 3-2.

It appeared the Yankees would benefit from Bobby Abreu’s liner hitting starter Nick Blackburn in the nose and knocking him out of the game in the fifth inning since he allowed a run and five hits.

However, Brian Bass, Jesse Crain and Joe Nathan allowed three singles in the final 4 2/3rd frames.

Derek Jeter’s third homer in the fifth accounted for the Yankee run.

Trailing, 2-0, in the third the Yankees loaded the bases with one out but didn’t score because Blackburn fanned Alex Rodriguez and retired Hideki Matsui, the AL’s leading hitter, on a routine grounder to the right side.

“We had one opportunity and didn’t cash in on it,” Girardi said. “Anytime you get the bases loaded with less than two outs you expect to score some runs.”

Matsui, who started the day hitting .337, left two runners on in the first, went 0-for-4 and is hitting .330.

Blackburn negated Chad Moeller’s two-out double in the fourth by getting Melky Cabrera on a grounder.

That was the Yankees’ final at-bat with a runner in scoring position.

Rasner gave up four singles and two runs in the first when Michael Cuddyer plated two with a two-out single. Mike Lamb’s sacrifice fly in the fourth upped the lead to 3-0. Jeter’s third homer cut the deficit to two but Cabrera falling down at the wall while getting to Justin Morneau’s drive resulted in him attempting to get the ball to Abreu but his toss went over Abreu’s head and Morneau toured the bases for a 4-1 advantage. Cuddyer added an RBI triple against Scott Patterson in the seventh.

“I was behind and up and they made me pay for it,” Rasner said.

Rasner has arrived to the point where his major league career isn’t start to start. He is part of the rotation and can shrug off pedestrian outings like yesterday’s without worrying if it will cost him a spot.

“I have to get ready for the next one and stay with the same approach,” said Rasner, who would benefit from more than one run of support Friday against the Royals at Yankee Stadium.